Howard Skempton

​​The shifting melodies and gentle chromaticism heard in Howard Skempton's music have led the British composer to be labeled as a minimalist—but his music has more to do with Morton Feldman's use of space than Philip Glass's repeated sequences. This sparse and intelligent use of color can be heard throughout Skempton's many solo piano pieces, a format that occupied him during the early part of his career and one he returned to in 2019 for the compact 24 Preludes and Fugues. Born in Chester, UK, in 1947, Skempton plays the accordion as well as the piano and has worked as a music publisher. He has written a piano concerto (premiered by John Tilbury and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in 2016), chamber music (such as the 2016 string quartet Moving On), and several vocal works, including settings of Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (2015) and D.H. Lawrence's Man and Bat (2017).